The Great Migration

The Great Migration Project explores the historic tide of African Americans moving North that changed Philadelphia, America and the world. The keystone of this project, created by Scribe Video Center, are five commissioned media arts works that reveal the ties between the agricultural world the migrants left behind and the new industrial world they helped create.

Artist Installations

When We Came Up Here

By Tina Morton

When We Came Up is a multimedia web-based montage. Audio recordings weave in and out of video, articles, and advertisements that offer the viewer a glimpse into the important role the Philadelphia Tribune, the oldest daily newspaper serving the African American community, played in providing vital information to the newly arrived southern traveler.

Artist Installations

Sonic Migration

By Mendi + Keith Obadike

A multi-media creation, Sonic Migration, explores the rich musical history of the church and the role that Tindley Temple played for newcomers during the first Great Migration. The stories of adaptation, faith and freedom of expression contained within the walls of the church dynamically emerge.

Artist Installations

Ancestral Correspondence: Looking Back at Our Future

By Lonnie Graham

In Ancestral Correspondence: Looking Back at Our Future, photographs, audio and video storytelling are used to highlight the events that occurred motivating individuals and families to transverse vast tracts of land, to leave families, to initiate new lifestyles, and to establish themselves in unknown communities.

Artist Installations

Standing at the Scratch Line

By Julie Dash

Standing at the Scratch Line is a short film about returning to sacred spaces of departure and arrival. Multi-media artist Julie Dash portrays the stories of a people seeking refuge and freedom in the African Methodist Episcopal Denomination. Working with Mother Bethel AME church in Philadelphia and Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, SC, Dash juxtaposes new footage with archival film and stills in a non-linear structure that also employs music and atmospheric sound effects.

Artist Installations

EASON

By Kevin Everson

EASON is a short experimental film about migration and the death of James Walker Hood Eason, leader of Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) of Philadelphia. Using historical information and new footage, Everson tells this forgotten fable of the Great Migration.